Women's Issues

Since 2012, the national non-profit organization Girls Who Code has taught computing and computer-programming skills to thousands of girls all across America. Our guest is the CEO and founder of that organization, Reshma Saujani, who has a new book out.

(Note: This interview originally aired back in March.) "The disappearing maternal care problem is common across rural America. Only about 6 percent of the nation's OB/GYNs work in rural areas, according to the latest survey numbers from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Yet 15 percent of the country's population, or 46 million people, live in rural America.

(Note: This program first aired back in January.) On this edition of ST Medical Monday, our guest is Dr. Rachel Carlton Abrams, who has been a board member of the American Holistic Medical Association since 2013. Dr.

On this edition of ST Medical Monday, we get to know Robin Steinberg, a New York City-based public defender who founded the nonprofit Bronx Defenders in the late 1990s. This organization is still known for its model of "holistic defense," in which clients are advocated for by an interdisciplinary team of professionals (legal and otherwise) who address the underlying causes as well as the collateral consequences of our criminal-justice system. As Steinberg tells us, in January of this year, the Bronx Defenders opened a smaller-scale satellite office in North Tulsa called Still She Rises.

"The disappearing maternal care problem is common across rural America. Only about 6 percent of the nation's OB/GYNs work in rural areas, according to the latest survey numbers from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Yet 15 percent of the country's population, or 46 million people, live in rural America.

On this edition of ST, we speak with Lydia Reeder, a writer and editor based in Denver. She tells us about her now book, a popular history entitled "Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team That Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory." It's the surprising but true Depression-era story of a women's basketball team -- the Oklahoma Presbyterian College Cardinals -- who came from Durant, and who were pretty much the best of the best in the early 1930s. The leader of this inspiring team, the visionary coach Sam Babb, is also profiled in Reeder's book -- and, indeed, Ms.

On this edition of ST, we speak with the noted historian and scholar Blanche Wiesen Cook. The third and final volume of her landmark biography of Eleanor Roosevelt has just been published. "Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962" covers the final decades of a woman who towers over the 20th century, taking us through World War II, FDR's death, the founding of the United Nations, and much more. It is, as Maureen Corrigan noted on NPR's Fresh Air, "a monumental biography [and] an exhilarating story, as well as an undeniably melancholy one.

(Note: This show originally aired back in January.) On this edition of StudioTulsa on Health, we speak with Mark Edwards, the co-founder of Upstream USA, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to, per its website, "change healthcare so that all women receive the highest quality services and can conveniently access the full range of contraceptive methods, including IUDs and the implant.... Upstream USA's mission is to change contraceptive counseling and care in health centers so that clients have easy access to the best contraceptive methods.

On this edition of ST, we learn about a novel called "The Unraveling of Mercy Louis," which has just recently appeared in paperback. Our guest is the author, Keija Parssinen, who grew up in Saudi Arabia and Texas before graduating from Princeton University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Parssinen is now an assistant professor of English at the University of Tulsa, and she tells us about the themes, experiences, and ideas that led to the creation of this (her second) novel.

On this edition of ST, we speak with two outstanding local citizens who were among the ten women recently given the Women of the Year - Pinnacle Award from the YWCA Tulsa collaboration with the Mayor'’s Commission on the Status of Women. Earlier this week, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett presented these awards in person, and in doing so recognized how each of this year's recipients has worked to eliminate racism and/or empower women.

On this edition of ST on Health, we speak with Mark Edwards, the co-founder of Upstream USA, a newly formed nonprofit that aims, as noted at its website, "to change healthcare so that all women receive the highest quality services and can conveniently access the full range of contraceptive methods, including IUDs and the implant." Indeed, as stated further at the Upstream USA site: "Fully half of all pregnancies in the United States are accidental.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we speak by phone with the novelist and writing instructor Eileen Pollack, whose books include the novels "Breaking and Entering" and "Paradise, New York," as well as two collections of short fiction and two creative-nonfiction textbooks. Her newest book is a memoir called "The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club," and it looks back on her challenging experiences as a young woman majoring in physics at Yale in the 1970s while also highlighting various issues that still plague women in science across the nation today.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we learn about Poetic Justice, an ongoing writing project for incarcerated women at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Tulsa. This writing-workshop program began about 18 months ago and has been very popular from the outset. Our guest is Ellen Stackable, a high school English and World Studies teacher at the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, who directs the program and serves as one of its educators.

On this installment of ST, on the eve of the Fourth of July, we replay an interview from last year with the Denver-based journalist and nonfiction author Helen Thorpe, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, and elsewhere. Thorpe's first book, 2009's widely acclaimed "Just Like Us," tellingly profiled the lives of three young Latinas living in the United States.

On this edition of ST, we speak with the Kentucky-based writer and historian, Emily Bingham, who is the author of "Mordecai: An Early American Family" (2003) and co-editor of "The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal." Bingham tells us about her newest book, which is actually a biography of her own great-aunt: "Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham." As was noted of this volume in a starred review in Kirkus: "A colorful portrait of a daring woman....

(Note: This interview originally aired in late October.) We speak with author and journalist Kirstin Downey, whose new book is "Isabella: The Warrior Queen." It's an engrossing biography of Isabella of Castile, the powerful Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.

On this edition of ST, we speak with author and journalist Kirstin Downey, whose new book, just out from Doubleday, is "Isabella: The Warrior Queen." It's an engrossing biography of Isabella of Castile, the powerful Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.

On this presentation of ST, we welcome Karen Abbott, the bestselling author of "Sin in the Second City" and other books, whom USA Today has called a "pioneer of sizzle history." Abbott joins us by phone to talk about her newest volume, which tells the strange-but-true stories of four different women who risked everything to become spies, combatants, or informants during the Civil War. The book is "Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War," and it's just out from Harper.

On this edition of our program, we speak with Vanessa Finley, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer at YWCA Tulsa. A Tulsa native, Booker T. Washington grad, and non-profit executive with 20+ years of experience, Finley has recently relocated to Tulsa from Kansas City; she began her tenure at YWCA Tulsa earlier this month.

Our guest on StudioTulsa is the noted Denver-based journalist and nonfiction author Helen Thorpe, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, and elsewhere. Thorpe's first book, 2009's widely acclaimed "Just Like Us," tellingly profiled the lives of three young Latinas living in the United States. Her newly published second book, "Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War," takes a close look at three female veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Our guest on this edition of ST is Charlotte Ponticelli, the recently named Program Director for the American Committees on Foreign Relations, who was a guest of the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations last night. At that event, she gave an address entitled "The Status of Women's Rights in Afghanistan." Ponticelli is an international consultant as well as an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America. She has more than twenty years' experience working for the U.S.

On this edition of ST, we speak with Susan Kates, an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Oklahoma, who tells us about her new book, an autobiographical collection of essays called "Red Dirt Women: At Home on the Oklahoma Plains." Born and raised in Ohio, Kates now considers herself an Oklahoman --- she's been teaching at OU for the past two decades or so --- and this book quite deliberately traces her development from immigrant to native.

On this edition of our show, we speak with the author and journalist Denise Kiernan, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Discover, Ms., and many other publications. She's written a number of books for adults and children, and has also worked as a producer for ESPN, MSNBC, and other media outlets.

As some of us know already, Oklahoma leads the nation, by a lamentably significant margin, in female incarcerations --- and two-thirds of the women in our state's prisons are actually there for non-violent offenses. Today, we hear about on-going efforts to combat this trend. On this edition of StudioTulsa on Health, Dr. John Schumann, our guest host, learns about Women in Recovery (or WIR), an outpatient incarceration-alternative for women facing long prison sentences for non-violent, drug-related offenses.

Today on ST, we speak by phone with the author and journalist, Tanya Biank, whose book, "Army Wives," is the basis for the popular series of the same title on Lifetime TV. Biank is also the daughter, sister, and wife of U.S. Army colonels, and during her days as a newspaper reporter, she traveled around the globe with American soldiers. Biank's new book, just out, is called "Undaunted: The Real Story of America's Servicewomen in Today's Military" --- and this is what we're discussing with her on our program. Given the decision, announced one week ago, by U.S.

On this edition of ST, we speak by phone with Deborah Rhode, the Director of the Center on the Legal Profession and the E.W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Prof. Rhode will give the free-to-the-public Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture on Thursday of this week (the 13th) at 6pm in the John Rogers Hall on the University of Tulsa campus. (There will be a pre-lecture reception at 5:30pm in the mezzanine of John Rogers Hall; you'll find more details about this event here.) Prof.